Posts by Dave Fagg

Let’s imagine that there emerged a consensus in Australian society that Christianity had a propensity for violence and abuse…Despite Christian leaders publicly rejecting the violence of Christians, and reminding people of the peaceful life of Christ, the consensus nevertheless took hold in the collective mind of Australia.

What would come next, after this widespread acceptance of Christianity’s inherent violence? I think there are a few options.

The Cornerstone Community guys in Bendigo just dedicated their Old Church on the Hill today, and as I write this are having a tasty celebration. I was asked to write this prayer for the followers of Jesus who live and work around that place. Privilege to be there. Cornerstone Community Prayer We pray now for the Cornerstone Community and all those who follow Christ in this Neighbourhood. We ask that the presence of God be with them always. May God’s law of love permeate every part of your common life. May God’s deep everlasting acceptance carry you with confidence wherever you go. We ask that they encounter Jesus Christ again and again. In the stories of the kingdom of God, and the households of…

I’ve had some frivoulous fun in the last few weeks asking people “Who are you voting for?” Even in our over-sharing world, many respond with embarrassment, and that’s before they’ve told me “Australian Christians”. I really don’t have a problem with discussing religion and politics publicly – it’s fun, interesting, connects with people’s hearts etc etc etc. Why would I not want to discuss these things? So, here is my voting intention, which won’t change in essence unless a candidate turns up to the “Really Useful Working Bee” and changes my mind with their weeding technique. I’ll start from the bottom up. My basic voting decisions are based on a mix of desire for loving justice and a desire that certain candidates not get…

I run a youth development program with Urban Seed, a Christian organisation. A secular hiphop youth program wanted to use our church hall for weekly dance sessions. I let them. I then built a relationship with the main youth worker by coming along to his . I listened to his story, to his values, and decided there was much overlap with my values.

I am a youth worker and youth work trainer, and I regularly write on youth work and youth ministry, so this announcement is probably no surprise. But, given I am a ‘5’ on the Enneagram personality scale, I have been doing a silly amount of research about this. But sooner or later it will happen – a blog about youth work current affairs, comment, events, jobs etc. In my voracious quest for more information, I am keen for you to provide grist for the mill, food for my brain etc. Please take 30 seconds to fill out this little poll: [polldaddy poll=”7114941″]

In the little Christian cult that I belong to, we use “Queries and Advices” to guide our way. We chose this over a creed for a number of reasons which I’ll outline below, but lately I’ve been thinking that I’d like a little creedalism. We borrowed the idea of ‘queries and advices’ from the Quakers, or the “Religious Society of Friends”. These are the queries and advices from the British Quakers. Quakers are most famous for their cereal products, but they used to be famous for refusing to go to war, not drinking alcohol, not swearing oats (oops, ‘oaths’) and silent worship. There used to be only 3 Quaker queries, but there is quite a few more now. We made up our own queries and…

Last year, friends of ours missed out on a house at auction – it went for $10K more than they could afford. Snapped up by a motivated bidder, it could be bulldozed for units, rented out or made over and re-sold. This is happening more and more in Long Gully. With cute miners’ cottages and an ageing population headed for the grave or the nearest nursing home (currently expanding as we speak), young families, singles and investors will fight among themselves to grab the bargains. It’s even made the local news. This trend raises serious questions for me and the others here in our little Christian community, who bought houses to commit to Long Gully. Are we simply an enclave of the middle-class within a poor…

I’ve been in plenty of youth ministry prayer times, and have led them myself, where we have prayed passionately for this or that young person, for strength for ourselves, for God to intervene. This is a valid form of prayer. But all too easily it becomes a way of us trying to persuade God to do what we think should happen. It’s fakery – we are pretending that we know what is the Godly thing to do, and if we just pray hard enough, God will join up to our campaign.

I’m currently working on the bones of a book on Christian youth work. Here is some of my thoughts on the different ways Christians do youth work. I’d welcome any comments on these, as well as some sexy category names… The broad category is “Christian work with young people”. Primarily, it has meant:

Those on FB may know that I have left it. I’m having some withdrawal symptoms involving a twitch in the hand when holding my phone, an automatic mouse move to the place where the FB shortcut was, and a niggling feeling that I am missing out on a debate, event or work-related opportunity. And I definitely am missing out on something. In the same way that the telephone was once a luxury, but now is as necessary as a letter-box, Facebook has become almost essential if you work amongst anyone aged 10-30. Justin & Jenny Duckworth are to blame – they have written a book called “Against the Tide, Toward the Kingdom” and one of their helpful ideas is that we all have things…

Nothing is more fallacious than wealth. It is a hostile comrade, a domestic enemy. John Chrysostom, early church father A few years ago I was talking with a young man who was really interested in God – we’ll the young guy “Brad”. Brad had been talking to a youth worker who was also a Christian. This youth worker told Brad that he had prayed for a vehicle and someone had donated a motorbike to him. Brad thought this was fantastic! It was obvious that the youth worker believed strongly that God had directly intervened to make this happen. I don’t want to denigrate his obvious gratitude. I think that God can bless us financially or materially. But there are a few things to say…

Jesus Christ’s outright denial of a culture of reciprocity, which consumerism relies on (I’ll buy this if it gets me that; I’ll participate if I get X), is the good soil in which commitment to the common good can be fostered.

Christian community development is a powerful way to help people participate in the kingdom of God, and within such participation the stories and ideas of the gospel come alive. From the Christian community development side, evangelism provides a risk factor without which Christian community development easily slides into secularised self-help mush.